


the train is not a metaphor

by corollary



Category: Final Fantasy VIII, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Crossover, Gift Fic, Meta, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-04
Updated: 2010-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corollary/pseuds/corollary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cycles and breaking them; maybe making a new future built on peace instead of carnage. All it takes is a deal with the devil in her smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the train is not a metaphor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumiregawa Nenene (Shadowblight)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowblight/gifts).



_standing at the edge of your town  
with the skyline in your eye   
you knew you were lost  
but you carried on anyway_

* * *

**now arriving.**

Coffee Over The Sky was a quiet, clean cafe on the outskirts of the Hollow Bastion marketplace. Slick, clean tiles and the gleaming countertops boasted loving care from the waitresses who bounced back and forth from customer to customer and the portly, balding man behind the counter -- the owner, likely. Rows upon rows of booth seats housed various customers, their newspapers crinkling in unison above their hushed chatter and the sluice of rain against the windows. At the very last booth, Sora sat across from Leon, who thumbed through the menu with vague interest.

There was an old fashioned music player in the corner, crooning a soft ballad that Sora vaguely remembered hearing at Kairi's house one evening after school, and he found himself humming along.

Leon's gaze swung abruptly. "Do you know that song?"

"Uh, no, not really," Sora smiled cheekily, playing with the milk container. He had no idea why Leon had brought him here, especially insisting that Donald and Goofy stay with Cid. "I've just heard it once or twice... don't know who sings it, though."

"Her name was Julia Heartilly," Leon told him, setting the menu down. "She died a long time ago."

Under the press of Leon's gaze, Sora sunk a bit in his seat. "Oh. Uh. Was she... a friend of yours?"

"No." Leon waved over the nearest waitress, who greeted him with a bright smile. "One coffee, black, and—"

"Make that two!" Sora interrupted.

"Make that _one_," corrected Leon, "And a hot chocolate with the kid. No whipped cream."

The waitress verified the order before bouncing off, leaving Sora to mutter under his breath.

"There's a story," Leon began, "about a witch and two knights."

The witch wasn't always a witch, Leon told him. She used to be a princess, working tirelessly to restore the fallen kingdom of Timber from the clutches of the evil false king. The first knight was as wild as the dragons he fought, and was believed to be executed after he made an attempt on the false king's life. The second knight was a soldier, raised on protocol and regulations.

"They didn't like each other at first, the princess and the second knight," Leon said with a grimace. The princess understood that life was something to be lived, not just to trudge through with the hope that nothing too terrible happened along the way. The knight looked at her and saw only her lack of experience in battle, her fumbling use of her weapon, her need to be surrounded by people who cared about her. "You see, the knight had sworn long ago that he wouldn't get close to people, because he was afraid they'd leave him. He cut himself off from everything."

The princess had to be taken back to the knight's home -- barracks and a training facility for other soldiers, called Garden -- and slowly, she and the knight grew close.

There was another witch called Ultimecia. She was in league with the first knight, and together they killed the false king. "Our orders were to assassinate her at all cost. Soldiers don't question their orders," Leon said gravely.

The princess was to be kept far away from the frontlines, but something happened. "The witch who called herself Ultimecia was really a vessel, inhabited by a ghost of another witch from the future."

Sora's mouth twitched. "You're making this up."

Leon shook his head.

"How many witches are there?" asked Sora.

"Four." Pause. "Five."

"You're making this up."

Leon's lips seemed to go pale as he pressed them together -- was he _laughing_? "I swear, I'm not."

The waitress reappeared, setting down two steaming mugs. In spite of himself, Sora breathed in deep the scent of his hot chocolate.

Leon took a hearty gulp of his coffee, seemingly immune to the temperature. "Now... where was I?"

"Ghost of a witch from the future," Sora prompted.

"Yeah. Ultimecia was driven out of the vessel, causing a transference of power." Ultimecia dove in to the first girl with potential it saw -- the princess. After that, the princess fell into a deep sleep, not yet being acclimated to her new status as a witch. The knight carried the princess back to Garden, where he watched over her for several days. The knight grew anxious, having grown to care deeply for the princess. Finally, he decided to take her to the hidden nation of Esthar, where the Time Witch lived. "He thought the Time Witch could see what had happened to the princess and help."

The princess did wake up, but the knight and his comrades still had to do something about Ultimecia. "She wanted to collapse time on itself, destroy everything."

Sora's eyes widened. "Why?"

"Because she had lost something very important, and she was desperate to get it back." Leon's voice caught on his words. "After many long battles, the Time Witch and the princess were able to lock Ultimecia in one time, where the knight and his comrades fought and defeated her."

Sora frowned. "Then what?"

Leon hesitated.

* * *

**platform.**

There is a tugging at her arm. Rinoa struggles against it, mumbling. "Let me sleep. Go away."

There is chatter in the distance, and water. Bells clang against one another with the opening and closing of doors. The tugging persists—"Rinoa, you have to wake up,"—but her eyelids feel like lead, her head syrupy.

"Did we go out drinking?" This is said aloud, words muffled against her arm. Vaguely she is aware of a wooden bench, cold against the back of her knees, and still that damned tugging—"What!"

"You don't want to miss your train," the voice says.

Rinoa blinks, running a hand down her face. "Ellone?"

The girl smiles. "No, not exactly. More like, your... memory of Ellone. Very few people can be here and there at the same time. Now get up, you don't want to miss your train."

"If you're not Ellone, why do you look like her?"

"I just _told you_—oh, never mind. Yes. Hi. I'm Ellone. Now will you please get up?"

Reluctantly, Rinoa does get up, her joints creaking with the movement. She glances at Ellone — or rather, the thing insisting that it's Ellone, for there's no magic coming off her like waves. The real Ellone is vast, can take up entire rooms with the cloying essence of her power. The real Ellone exudes colour from every step, affects everything she touches.

This is just a skeletal imitation: a smile without warmth, a shell with no soul.

"Where am I?" Rinoa gazes around. It almost looks like Dollet, but the buildings are too new and she can't read the signs.

Ellone — Not-Ellone — makes a gesture. "It's—okay. You know how when you peel an onion or a potato, the skin comes off in pieces? The world's like that. This one, anyway. As it gets older, certain pieces just... fall off, slipping between the cracks. They end up here."

Rinoa blows a tuft of hair out of her vision. "That makes no sense."

Not-Ellone shrugs. "I'd explain it properly, but you wouldn't be able to understand it. Human language is somewhat lacking."

"So, the world is an onion..."

"Yeah. As it gets older, it can't contain everything. Too much technology, too much magic." Not-Ellone glances sideways at her, with a smile that's too much like a grimace. "Pieces fall off, end up here. But this place is just an edge, it can't sustain anything. That's why the train exists... although it's not always a train."

Rinoa wonders, "Why do I have to get on?"

"Why do any of us have to get on?"

"Would you stop that!" Her hands are at her side, clenched firmly into fists. "Stop being cryptic and just... help me? I want to go home."

Something changes in Not-Ellone's expression. Her brow tempers itself against the quirking of her lips, looking almost like—and Rinoa doesn't want to say pity, because she will not be pitied by anyone, so she decides on compassion. It makes Not-Ellone look more like Ellone.

"You can't go home. Just... trust me. You're better off getting on the train and letting it take you... well. Where ever."

There is a chiming in the distance; a series of alternating lights, and the sound of metal against metal. It is almost soothing, sounds coming together to sing a lullaby only she could hear.

"That's it," Not-Ellone cajoles. "Just get on the train. Everything else will be taken care of."

"Are," and she swallows; the train is getting closer, and there's the urge to throw herself at it, which she resists. "Are you coming with me?"

Not-Ellone shakes her head. For the first time, Rinoa notices the freckles splayed across Ellone's nose. "My job is to get you there."

The train rolls to a stop, brakes screeching and wind whipping against her.

"Before you go," Not-Ellone makes a show of smoothing down her skirt. "There is the matter of your fare."

* * *

**tracks.**

She likes Namine's pictures. They are crudely drawn, the work of an untaught child, but there is an honesty in their simple colours. She is able to convince herself that if she looks long enough, she can see the faces staring back up at her. The man who danced with fire; the lost boy who was only half of the whole; a boy caught between unending stairwells and his own slipping memories.

She stares at the last one longer than the others. Two men, purposely inflicting the same scar on one another. _Brothers, maybe._ "Who's in this one?"

Namine laughs, and it sounds almost cruel. "You tell me."

* * *

**platform**.

Rinoa halts mid-step, one foot still on the platform. "My fare?"

Not-Ellone smiles. It's perhaps her first real smile; a molestation of the flesh, teeth bared. "Nothing is free, Sorceress."

"Fine. What is it?"

"It might be your pretty little face," Not-Ellone chants, all sing song and nursery rhymes. "Or it might be your favourite memories. It might even be the power that lays deep in your bones."

She rests one hand against the surface of the train; it's warm to the touch, the electricity humming in time to the leaps and bounds of her pulse. "I don't want to play any more of your stupid games. Just tell me!"

Not-Ellone glances up, smiling that same sick smile, and tells her.

And the world crashes down.

* * *

**tracks**.

Squall Leonhart was always prepared for anything the world would send at him. Even death.

No — especially death. He was raised from childhood to find peace in last rites. The average shelf life for a SeeD was twenty-five. Those who made it to thirty were the lucky ones, and were encouraged to retire. Why not quit while you're ahead?

Squall Leonhart was not prepared for Her.

There were other things, too. But they came later. Saving the world? More like one thing had led to another, and then to another. There was always something more to do, one more thing to protect. Saving the girl, winning Her heart? When he had it, he had not known what to do with it. So he had smiled and kissed Her and played out their little fairy tale ending. It had been good for a while. Almost like happiness.

At his core, he was only one man. There were moments of doubt — _if only I was stronger, if only I knew more, if only She had said something_ — but they were lost amidst the shuffling of the keys, the passing of the burdens. It didn't matter, because she was already gone. It didn't matter, because he was no one's knight. Left behind, he was just tired eyes and flashes of memories from an orphanage and a time that may as well have been years ago; arms that couldn't help anyone; a gunblade he no longer had the will to lift. The only thing that could happen next was death, and it was in the last turn of the hourglass, in Siren's mournful croon, in the frowns of those he might have once called friends.

He was very, very tired.

"Wake up, Squall," a voice says into his ear. Edea — no, Matron — sounding so soft and sweet. "It's time to catch your train."

* * *

**platform**.

"Don't you remember?" Not-Ellone asks.

She remembers -- the world, and wanting to burn it just for the reason of existing. The unfathomable crime of cacophany, the desire -- the need -- for silence.

_Be quiet. _

Just be quiet.

Rinoa's lips go white as she presses them together. "Who are you?"

Not-Ellone shrugs. The movement is alien and clumsy, slim shoulders rising and falling. "I'm some of you. I'm something else that fell from the world, forgotten. I'm--" and here she pauses, her mouth curling, "--I'm the part of you you're leaving behind."

She can hear music from inside the train. It sounds so sweet, lulling her feet into a complacent march; one foot, then another.

_Come with us._

Rinoa shakes her head. "Then why look like Ellone?"

Not-Ellone flinches, exasperation wearing like lines on her false face. "I'm what you wanted to see the most. I can't look like myself and talk to you. This is just... an affectation, a mask. You thought you could bend..." She makes a quick gesture, a flick of the wrist. "Everything. This is your punishment. Or, I guess it's a reward."

* * *

**tracks**.

When she finds him, she does not recognise him.

She is curled up on a bench in Hollow Bastion, although it's called Radiant Garden now. To her, it's still Hollow. The world has no heart of its own.

She knows what a picture she must make: tattered cloak and an ugly blue scarf she stole from one of the shops; hair plaited in a last ditch attempt at looking somewhat presentable; sunglasses taped back together to hide her bloodshot eyes. The bakery owner is kind and gives her croissant every time she comes in to escape the worst of the cold, but one croissant does nothing for the gauntness of her cheekbones, for the shadows in the hollows of her face.

She spends hours out of the day pressed up against that bench, listening for the thump. The world inhales and exhales in time to the heart it has lost—or the heart it never had.

It took exactly one month for her pride to deteriorate in the wake of trembling hands and she starts to ask for gil — no, not gil, munny. They either smile their watery smiles and offer her a few coins or dismiss her entirely, eyes downcast as they hurry past her, not wishing to catch her disease of poverty.

He doesn't do either.

Instead, he sits down next to her and unpacks two boxes. Fish and chips from the stand about half a mile east. She inhales deeply when he hands her the second box, not daring to hope.

"Sorry, it's not very fresh," he says, but when he starts to eat, so does she — and it is fresh, it's unbelievably delicious.

"Are you—" he begins but does not finish, prompting her to gaze at him curiously over her sunglasses. "Sorry," he repeats. "You just look like someone I know. Uh, used to know."

She considers him through sluggish eyes.

It's easy to imagine, if she closes her eyes and wishes. Fragments of a life she doesn't remember living, bloody hands pressing against his back like a lifeline.

"You don't," she tells him between bites of fish. It's not even a lie.

"I see," he says, gazing down into his lap.

There's a distant sound between the peddling of street vendors and various change between dropped into her cup.

It almost sounds like a heart breaking.

* * *

**platform**.

"You're a monster, you know," Not-Ellone tells her. The eyes are downright inhuman now, shifting shadows in their depths. "An abomination. You're something this world created to atone; a focal point for the sins of humans. No one will ever accept you again."

"I know," she says.

"It'll be easier, on the train. Where it takes you."

"I know," she says.

Where could she go back to? That world—the world that had cast her aside, peeled her off like an outer layer it had no use for and left her to rot—had begun to sour against her long ago. She will lose the ability to be Rinoa Heartilly, friend and girlfriend, sometimes resistance fighter and sometimes librarian if she stays and lets the world brand her. She is their Sorceress. All her hopes for a normal life died the day she said yes: _yes, I will be your new vessel; yes, I will conquer you._

To save their future, all she has to give up is her own.

And yet — Rinoa presses one curled fist against her mouth. _Squall_. "It's not fair."

Not-Ellone blinks at her, the sweep of her long lashes an appropriate prelude to her solemnity. "It's not supposed to be."

* * *

**now arriving.**

Leon tossed a handful of bills on the table and stood up. "The princess and the knight decided the best thing they could do was leave their world. Maybe they could break the cycle."

Julia's song was still playing in the jukebox, the watery croon a welcome reprieve from the tapping of rain against the glass windows.

Sora peered into the empty hot chocolate, trying to find the appropriate words for his concern. "But... Leon. Can a princess and a witch really be the same person?"

To that, Leon had no answer.

He was saved by an indistinct toll. That bell rarely rang those days.

"What's that?"

Leon felt the smile before he knew enough to subdue it, an unfamiliar quirk of his lips. "Train's getting in."


End file.
